Inside the AI Ranking Factors Shaping Your Experiences on ChatGPT, Google, Copilot, & More
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:39 am
How people search, whether as a consumer or business buyer, is changing. Thanks to AI-powered experiences, from ChatGPT to Copilot to AI Overviews, people are discovering products and researching providers in new ways — and challenging companies to adapt their marketing efforts.
Meeting users in these new places starts with understanding the ranking factors powering these AI experiences. Since 2023, our team has been researching how these platforms and language models generate responses and how to improve an organization’s visibility in these responses.
Below is our research into AI ranking factors and recommendations for improving your visibility:
[Summary] AI ranking factors in 2 minutes
AI ranking factors
For ease, we’ve condensed our research into a two-minute summary:
The AI ranking factors shared most often across dentist database and experiences included:
Online reputation: An organization’s reputation — demonstrated most often through online reviews, ratings, and mentions — affected whether AI experiences mentioned the brand, especially for questions about finding the best product or provider.
Search engine optimization (SEO): Sites that ranked well in search results appeared more often in AI experiences. The most likely reason is that SEO prioritizes creating helpful, thorough, and easy-to-read content.
Website authority: Similar to online reputation, AI experiences cite authoritative sites more often. Websites demonstrate authoritativeness through online mentions and backlinks.
LLMs: From GPT-4 to Gemini to Claude 3.5, the large language models (LLMs) powering the AI experience also impacted the generated responses and their citations, which poses a unique challenge to businesses’ marketing strategies.
Because of these similarities, we’ve found the most effective optimizations are:
Improve reputation management: Invest in reputation management, from encouraging reviews to responding to them. Besides improving your visibility in AI search experiences, it’ll also serve as a valuable trust signal to users searching without AI.
Practice SEO: Use search engine optimization to create a strong foundation for appearing in AI experiences. Focus on the cornerstone elements of SEO: On-page, off-page, and technical SEO to build your organic and AI presence.
Build trust and demonstrate authority: Besides investing in reputation management, work to create a trusted and authoritative site through strategies like developing useful tools, producing helpful reports or research, and attracting endorsements from other sites.
Use OmniSEO™: Adapt to AI search experiences with OmniSEO, which focuses on making your business visible across LLMs and the AI search experiences they power, from conversing with an AI chatbot to using an AI search engine.
Meeting users in these new places starts with understanding the ranking factors powering these AI experiences. Since 2023, our team has been researching how these platforms and language models generate responses and how to improve an organization’s visibility in these responses.
Below is our research into AI ranking factors and recommendations for improving your visibility:
[Summary] AI ranking factors in 2 minutes
AI ranking factors
For ease, we’ve condensed our research into a two-minute summary:
The AI ranking factors shared most often across dentist database and experiences included:
Online reputation: An organization’s reputation — demonstrated most often through online reviews, ratings, and mentions — affected whether AI experiences mentioned the brand, especially for questions about finding the best product or provider.
Search engine optimization (SEO): Sites that ranked well in search results appeared more often in AI experiences. The most likely reason is that SEO prioritizes creating helpful, thorough, and easy-to-read content.
Website authority: Similar to online reputation, AI experiences cite authoritative sites more often. Websites demonstrate authoritativeness through online mentions and backlinks.
LLMs: From GPT-4 to Gemini to Claude 3.5, the large language models (LLMs) powering the AI experience also impacted the generated responses and their citations, which poses a unique challenge to businesses’ marketing strategies.
Because of these similarities, we’ve found the most effective optimizations are:
Improve reputation management: Invest in reputation management, from encouraging reviews to responding to them. Besides improving your visibility in AI search experiences, it’ll also serve as a valuable trust signal to users searching without AI.
Practice SEO: Use search engine optimization to create a strong foundation for appearing in AI experiences. Focus on the cornerstone elements of SEO: On-page, off-page, and technical SEO to build your organic and AI presence.
Build trust and demonstrate authority: Besides investing in reputation management, work to create a trusted and authoritative site through strategies like developing useful tools, producing helpful reports or research, and attracting endorsements from other sites.
Use OmniSEO™: Adapt to AI search experiences with OmniSEO, which focuses on making your business visible across LLMs and the AI search experiences they power, from conversing with an AI chatbot to using an AI search engine.